


To Taste The Sun

by ilyahna1980



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst and Humor, Friendship/Love, Humor, M/M, M/M Smut, Magic, Oral Sex, Sexual Content, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-04-16 13:43:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4627452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilyahna1980/pseuds/ilyahna1980
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rylan Amell and Anders, both recently harrowed mages and close friends within the Ferelden Circle of Magi, break the platonic barrier for the first time one night. Immixed with genuine friendship, youthful love, unabashed lust, and the inherent angst one may face in a Circle, this is just another tale, among thousands of narratives, of two mages seeking something meaningful within their meaningless existence. </p><p>WARNING: this was written for the Thedas' Most Bangable Challenge. Plenty of smut to be found inside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Taste The Sun

The young mage slips on silent bare feet down the hall, and the flagstone is just short of frigid on his feet. There is the occasional rug in the library, because the senior mages insist they decrease moisture in the air, and they grace some of the more affluent quarters like the Senior Enchanters’, but the Templars don’t bother with such frivolities in the dormitories. They were lucky to get blankets and more than one change of clothes.

He has timed his flight from his own quarters well, for he has memorized the schedules of every Templar who patrolled this wing of the Tower, and the indolent DeChamps is known for his immutable punctuality and predictability.

His clandestine destination is two doors down, and he reaches it without incident. Pulling the latch silently, he pushes it open only wide enough to emit his thin frame, and closes it behind him.

Inside, it is dim, but not pitch dark, for Everson lays on his back on his top bunk with a small orb of light hovering over him as he reads. The older man glances at him, and his lips crease with a small, knowing smile and he shakes his head, returning to his studies.

His intrusion to this dormitory is doubtfully no surprise to anyone here, for it is a near nightly occurrence; it has been for years, in fact. Ingrained habit counts fifteen chilly steps from the door, skirts a stool, and a hand connects in the gloom with the smooth wood of the post framing the bunk. Sliding his palm down, he smiles when fingers connect with his and guide him down, expected as he is.

Rylan Amell shifts on the bed, which is hardly large enough for two people, but the space he makes for Anders is warm with his body heat, and he tucks himself against Amell with a contented sigh. His fellow mage pulls the blanket back into place, and the glow of Everson’s orb vanishes as their heads disappear beneath the threadbare woolen covering.

“Hi,” Amell breathes a fraction above a whisper.

“Hi,” Anders responds with a smile, wedging his narrow body alongside Amell’s so that almost every plane and angle connect.

Lithe fingers remain intertwined, pressed warmly to the other as they lay connected. Amell slips a bare foot between Anders’ calves, toes wriggling against flesh to greedily sap warmth from his companion. Indeed, it is a companionship firmly embedded within the bedrock of genuine friendship and bolstered by the passage of time. One that has endured fractured whispers bleeding into the bowels of night, bitter viscous tears at the behest of failures, and vigorous laughter induced by their shared penchant for mischief. A companionship irrevocably forged out of necessity; a tacit desperation, no less, to whittle something meaningful out of a meaningless existence.    

Yet it is on nights such as these, where they find themselves entangled and shrouded beneath the weight of a woolen blanket, where the haunting whisper of a sad melody scratches inside their skulls. Indeed, it is a companionship tinged with longing, and plagued by an asphyxiating desire to wish for more beyond a murky platonic rapport. Though any mage, regardless of inherent natural ability, degree of intelligence, or manner of conduct, knows the folly of such yearning.

 _A folly that is often fatal_ , Amell reminds himself as he gently squeezes his cherished friend’s hand.

Anders cannot count many occupants of the Circle tower among friends, for he has always been a mostly solitary creature. Anders, in fact, is not even his name, and the mystery that surrounds his origins and his closely guarded identity hearken back to a distant humid summer when a twelve year old boy from the Anderfels was dragged from his home and incarcerated here in this very tower. His name was read aloud as they sealed his phylactery five years before, and it has not been uttered hence, for he has been too stubborn since his imprisonment to reveal it to anyone. Even his treasured companion, whose fingers are now interlaced with his own as they have been many times before. He has considered it, more than once: unburdening his secret here in the dark, but it remains the only thing which truly belongs to him, and thus he guards it, even from someone he loves.

For Anders does love Amell, the emotion touching upon every complex facet of the spectrum of feeling. The mage comfortably entangled with him now has been, at times, a friend, a brother, a confidant, and something more.

He shifts his head, knowing just where to place his lips in the intimate, familial setting, pressing them to Amell's, just as he had for the first time years before, here in this same room. It had been an experiment of untrodden sensation, bashful curiosity, with awkward mouths both of disordered teeth and tongues, but it was now wonted, proficient gratification.

“I have a story for you,” he whispers against his mouth, lips spreading into a smile upon Amell’s.

“Oh?” he murmurs, and the corners of his mouth quirk upward, mirroring Anders’ lips.

His tone is amicable, laced with the magnitude of curiosity one prods a comrade with, though his physical comportment is tender and thus elucidates the complicated nature with which the pair has fallen into dance. For it is a tenuous, complex dance, one driven by the tune of that tinkling, morose melody, and one that has convoluted the shred of separation between platonic and romantic.

This distortion ripples along their bodies, warming them with a gentle flush that now reflects upon Amell’s pale cheeks.

“Yes,” Anders whispers, for there are no less than five other mages within the small room and no such illusion as privacy. He tightens his fingers around Amell's, feeling the sinew and bone in his grip. “Last night, when I didn't come to you, I was with Karl. You were right, you know… about his... _tastes_.” He can feel himself coloring, heat spreading across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose as he recalls those tastes, myriad and carnal.

Amell pulls his head back to impractically search Anders’ face in the dark. His lips are parted slightly and a sharp pang ricochets between his ribcage. Is it jealousy? Or dark curiosity? Neither sexual orientation nor strings of passionate liaisons (between men and women alike) are secrets kept from the other, and while Amell has known the intimacy of laying with another man, Anders - his comrade, his brother, his Anders - has never done so. Slowly, Amell can feel a muted heat spread across his cheeks at his friend’s admission.

_Thank the Maker for darkness._

“Karl?” he somehow finds his lips moving, “how… how was he – it with… him?”

Anders uses his free hand to scrub at the tingling sensation of expanding capillaries making his nose itch, and his eyes water with some feeling he is unsure how to name. He had been excited to tell Amell of this new development, for it had heretofore been a realm of experience that they had not shared, but suddenly he finds himself… embarrassed? Ashamed? But why?

“It was… different,” he manages. “In a good way.” He hesitates to expound with detail, where in times past both he and Amell have shared every particular of their erotic liaisons without care.

“Oh, I’ve heard he’s…” he pauses to swallow thickly, “that he’s, ehm, very good.”

Anders blushes harder now, knowing that he has no complaint about how he spent the evening before, but he doesn’t want to say this. “He uses magic,” he says instead. “I never thought of using it… for that purpose.”

“Some of the older mages do,” Amell strains a smile in the dark, though he can feel the flush spread from his cheeks down to his neck at the thought of Anders beneath another man’s touch.

_Anders raw with gasps, bent over and pinned by callused fingers yanking his neck open. Anders choking out fractured moans, drool leaking from his mouth at each slam of the hips. Anders tensing, roiling with a shuddering cry as he expels himself with blinded pleasure._

Amell’s breathing grows shallow, and he squirms to adjust himself in mild discomfort at their impossibly close entanglement.

As Amell squirms upon the cot beside him, repositioning, Anders methodically rearranges his limbs so that they are still as close, for it is habit. His chest is pressed against Amell's, and he feels the shortened breaths with which it rises and falls.

“Have you ever… tried it? Magic?”

He instinctively runs his slender fingers through Anders’ hair, and an unspoken curse forms upon his lips. However, he is motionless once more and melds himself against the fellow mage, for it too is habit and one he has long given up breaking.

“Yes,” he admits quietly, “it’s incredible, isn’t it?”

 _Incredible_. Anders recalls feeling as though he were shuddering and coming to pieces beneath Karl's touch, tendrils of creation magic seeping beneath his skin like liquid fire, electricity sparkling along his nerves. _Enticing. Erotic._

He finds his own chest rising sharply with not this memory, but with the fleeting thought of Amell's slender fingers, which now rake his hair back gently as they have a thousand times before, being the ones to touch him in such a way. Is this a line that can be crossed, he wonders?

He tilts his chin so that he can once again meet Amell's lips with his own, and responds at last, the words falling heated against his mouth: “I liked it.”

The admission ignites a similar thought inside Amell, his brain suddenly racing with the rich possibility of having Anders, of tasting him, of savoring every inch upon a tongue that now slips between his teeth. A dull ache pools within his belly and he snakes his arms around the mage, considering, however foolishly, that perhaps he will not be rebuffed for his brashness.  

Anders feels the answer to his unspoken, almost unformed thought, in the form of Amell's tongue as it slips between his teeth and caresses his own, and in the feel of slender arms circling his body and holding him close. He is tense for a moment, muscles stiff with the unfamiliarity of the desire spreading through his core for his long time friend, but slowly, he allows himself to relax, letting his eyes drift closed, and he deepens the kiss. There have been pecks, and the taste of tongues, but they have never kissed like this. Never so searching, and wanting.

Indeed, Amell sighs into him, exploring the silken hood of his mouth, each ridge of a tooth, and the earthy tones spread flush across his tongue. He is exploratory first; equal parts tentative and desiring as he languidly feels for every texture, rigid with calcium or soft flesh, his fingers now kneading carefully into his scalp. It is not the feel of him, however, that causes something within him to begin coiling, but the taste. He savors him thoroughly, each remnant hue of a meal and the naturally heady flavor of his tongue, before breaking the kiss gently. A string of mingled saliva still connects them while his chest rises and falls with pitched craving.

“Forgive me,” he manages somehow.

Whatever words Anders expects to fall from Amell's lips at this moment, they are not these. His brow beetles and his eyes squint in the gloom, though he can make out nothing more than a dull, limned outline beneath the blanket. But he knows his long time friend well enough to see what lurks between the lines, what lies unspoken, and he feels like a thing born anew, burgeoning with possibility. There is no trepidation immixed, no worry of shame or rejection, for he and Amell are forged together with a bond of steel that cannot be shattered by simple, misplaced touches.

With a thudding heart, blood thrumming through his veins with wilting anticipation, he moves his forearm from its resting place against Amell's hip, dragging it toward himself so that his hand replaces it. He has touched him before, of course, and he has even seen him nude, bathed in moonlight in the waters of the lake on forbidden, mischievous trysts at midnight for the thrill of escaping their captors.

He has never touched him this way. Not with the intention of remembering the way the bone protrudes just slightly, or the way his hip tapers just so toward his narrow waist. He slides the hand up, seeking more, and finds the texture of skin beneath his shirt, which at this moment he feels as he has never felt it: hot, and prickled with gooseflesh.

Amell’s sharp intake of breath is audible and he expels hot breath upon Anders’ lips. Padded fingertips graze him gently at first, a sensation that sends a thrill down his spine, before they apply the weighted pressure of intent. Responsively, Amell slips his hand down the mage’s cheek and issues a brief caress before trailing fingers down his neck. He can feel his skin radiating with heat, perhaps pink and raw with the intoxicating premise unfolding before them. Suddenly overwhelmed with a desire to behold him - not just to feel, or taste, but to see – he catches the collar of his shirt and drags it down carefully, exposing the milky slope of a collarbone shrouded by impenetrable darkness.

A smooth thumb softly traces the slant, imprinting a burning touch upon burning flesh, and he wills himself not to cast an illuminating orb of energy for his own indulgence.

Anders drags a long breath across his lips, and it lifts the muscle of his stomach in a flutter of desire. His skin feels scored where Amell touches him, dragging the soft pad of his thumb along his collarbone, and it suddenly feels as though he has a thousand upon thousand times the nerves that must exist beneath his flesh. His fingers tighten upon Amell’s hip, and he digs his nails in, then tries to relax them so as not to engender pain, but every thread of his being longs to pull him closer. To taste him again.

Unadulterated need suddenly grips Amell and he splays his long, slender fingers across Anders’ shoulder. He anchors himself, clutching onto him in an unspoken language that reeks of aching want before closing the space between their lips once more. Slipping his tongue between teeth, his shoulders deplete in tension as if quelled by the taste of his beloved friend.  

Anders inhales deeply around the kiss, drawing Amell’s breath from his body. He presses himself closer, and rather than lament the fact that his desire is evidenced now by the hardness between his legs, he allows Amell to feel it. It is the final question, the answer to which will determine whether they shall embark in a new direction in their long acquaintance.

Anders receives his answer in the form of a low groan rumbling from the depths of Amell’s throat. He deepens the kiss inexorably, the raw flush bleeding down his pale frame, consuming him to pool within the bulk of his own desire. His hips begin to gyrate slowly and he sinks into him, the sharp angles of their hipbones now osculating as Amell feels the outline of Anders’ stiff cock against his.

The wooden frame of the bunk creaks as Anders tugs Amell's hips into his, fingers kneading deeply into the pliable flesh of his lower back. He is sure that Amell can feel his pulse pounding in his tongue, and he knows he can feel the twitch of his manhood as it responds to the caress of their aching proximity. With a fumbling hand, he hooks the hem of Amell's trousers, and would have tugged them down, only so far as to free him, to touch him, for that is how things are done in the Circle: clothing stays on, robes are hitched up to hips, only the places which need contact feel the touch of air. It is how he experienced being with a man for first time, the night before, and that is not what he wants with Amell. He wants what the Circle wishes to steal from him: the warmth of another's flesh against his, safe in the darkness, the weight of a body over his own.

Gently, he uncoils his fingers from Amell's trousers, and breaks their kiss, sucking in air as stars swim in his vision. He now finds the corner of his friend's shirt, sliding it up experimentally, his knuckles grazing baby-soft hair as Amell flinches at the contact.

Yet he begins to thaw beneath Anders’ touch, for while he has never experienced such genuine physical intimacy, he understands fully what his fellow mage seeks. He allows Anders to slowly slip up his linen undershirt with lithe fingers, relishing in the forbidden touch with only a woolen blanket to separate them from reality. For this is what is transpiring, is it not? The dissociation from the garroting weight that their circumstance holds, breaking free from theocratic oppression that finds two young men entombed within a tower. A terrible curse, engineered by a deeply flawed social hierarchy, that somehow, if only for the briefest of moments, dissipates from thought as Amell loses himself to Anders’ tongue and seeking fingers.

Suddenly, he slips his hand between them and cups Anders, hitching slightly as he feels his rock hard plea beneath a burning palm.

Anders' breath catches in his throat, and his whole body spasms beneath Amell's touch. _He wants it. He has wanted, and for how long?_

He moves now, writhing as stealthily as possible as he removes his own tunic, biting his lip against the pleasure rocketing through him as each alteration in his position causes Amell's grip to shift upon him. The shirt is lost somewhere in the bed behind him, perhaps in the floor, and for a moment, the blanket slips away from their heads, falling now to reveal a freckled shoulder, and Amell's pale eyes, blinking in the mage-light with pupils dilated so fully that there is only the outline of faint blue. His rich brown hair is spread across the pillow they share.

Some fragmentation of his mind suggests that he pull the blanket back into place, to cocoon them in a semblance of privacy, but reptilian instinct floods all other thought, and once again, he is pressed to Amell, feeling for the first time, in his entire existence, the impression of supple, bare skin against his own. He buries his face in Amell's neck, fluttering the hair as he inhales his scent. A leg lifts, crossing his, to tug Amell's thigh between his own, and he whispers his friend's name, just beneath the edge of hearing. There is the lilt of a question in his tone.

Amell shudders with palpable frisson and he gently collects the tresses of Anders’ dark blonde mane, tucking them to one side of his neck so that he can finally behold him. His gaze drinks in his outline, dimly illuminated by his bunkmate’s softly filtering mage-light, and a single finger traces down the ridges of his spine. He is pale, so gloriously pale, as a consequence of both genetics and imprisonment inside the walls of an ancient tower. Amell notes the splash of freckles that begins at the base of his neck, sprawling across shoulders and down the planes of his back, and his hand suddenly stops at a particular smattering.

Only very recently harrowed into the School of Spirit, one of the four schools of Chantry-sanctioned magic that involves the arcane, esoteric, and ephemeral, his studies entail research more so than practice. Unlike the pupils within the School of Creation, who spend many an hour grinding elfroot into potions and coaxing the power of benevolent spirits across the Veil, or those within the School of Destruction, who are stifled and stalked by the omniscient presence of templars, Amell and his academic peers are relegated to harnessing _theoretical knowledge_.

In short, Amell has combed through almost every tome, text, and volume their Circle library has to offer, though taking particular interest and comfort in astrological texts. Perhaps it is foolish of him now, entangled and rife with lust for the one he loves, to find a constellation within the markings of this pale, thin creature.

Solium. _The Sun._

He traces an outline of it with a padded fingertip, considering that it looks ambiguously similar, though his head is thick with intoxication and thus perception tainted. He is throbbing achingly, both in his chest and between his loins, and he shivers out a sigh.

“Yes?” he whispers belatedly.

Anders does not hear these thoughts, though his own are of a likeness. He raises his face from Amell's neck, marveling at the ivory glow of his skin, the milky, silken texture of it, and he lifts a hand to cup his jaw. How can he go from friendship to besotted in the space of one night, and how does he discover this, this cavernous desire for the creature in his arms, after sharing the bed of another man? Has it simply been there all along, dormant out of necessity and fear, waiting to awaken?

"Yes," he answers the question issued from Amell's lips with a statement of his own, and it means something vast. Something that will span the seas of time. Then he leans forward and claims his lips once more, and he tastes gloriously new.

Amell trails his hands up and down his back, dragging short nails to create a ticklish sensation. He moans slightly as their hips strain against the other, returning the kiss with mounting passion as he pours everything into his mouth he could not possibly formulate with words.

Anders breaks the kiss at last, breathless, trailing lips and then teeth down Amell's neck. He whispers his name, dipping fingers below the hem of his trousers. Amell groans responsively, gasping as Anders nips at his neck. The sound of his name on his lips causes his chest to tighten, and he attempts to pull him closer.

Anders’ fingers wrap around his upper arms, and then he slowly guides him back on the bed, peppering his lips, chin, neck, then chest as he lies back. Anders shifts back, hooking fingers beneath Amell's trousers, drawing them slowly down as he slides down his body, maneuvering himself beneath the blanket. He is perched at edge of the bed as Amell finally lifts his hips to let Anders tug the trousers down and then off, to pool in the floor. He kisses Amell's belly, until lips reach his erection, which he tongues softly.

Amell whimpers mildly and it is a sound not often issued from his lips. He slides a hand into Anders' hair and grips him tightly as a consequence, toes curling in anticipation of an art he himself has practiced, though not with Anders. His breathing is ragged, eyes slipping shut at the mere tease of his wet, silken mouth.

Anders glides a hot tongue around the head, tracing the sensitive places, taking him in his mouth and then drawing back. Finally, he wraps fingers around his base, and a pulse of creation magic flows from his palm, making Amell’s erection stiffen even further, almost blindingly hard. Anders then takes him entirely into his mouth, sliding his tongue down to meet his own grip, and sets a rhythm with his mouth that matches pulses of warm magic.

"Maker's balls," he gasps and grips his hair tightly, punctuating the end of his soft cry with a moan. Bending his leg and planting his foot at the base of his spine, he trails it south, over his backside and down a thigh as he exhales erratically through his nose.

Anders pretends to respond, with a series of hums and vibrations that might have been words, then uses his other hand to massage Amell’s abdomen, fingers trailing tiny warm sparks that strike nerves all through his lower body.

"Oh my fuck, Anders," he rumbles with a groan that emanates from the core of his belly. "Maker, you're so incredible," he breathes loudly, almost settling as a whine as it leaves his throat.

And then suddenly, another voice interjects, incongruous and jolting as it rings down from the bunk above them.

_“Oh put a lid on it, Amell! Some of us need our beauty rest!”_

Anders freezes, mouth around Amell’s cock, eyes wide, as he has forgotten, fully, that anyone else in the world exists but the man whose pleasure he seeks. He hears a spluttering giggle from Amell, and then he too is laughing, creating a tangible vibration, and he takes his entire length to the base as he shivers with amusement. The hand holding him shifts down, tracing the tiniest hint of gentle creation magic over his balls, until one finger grazes his entrance, emanating warmth as he presses against it softly. The magic relaxes muscle by nature, and he slowly, easily, slips the finger inside.

Amell’s laughter subsides with a loud groan and he tenses when Anders penetrates him, sucking in air between gritted teeth. He exhales, tremoring, as the mage slowly works him open with a slick, pulsing finger. He is faintly quivering, both hands now coiled in the healer's long blonde locks, and his taut belly tightens with a wave of pleasure.

"Fuck, Anders," he gasps and claws at his scalp.

He slides the finger out, and then back in, in rhythm to the motion of his mouth as he takes Amell fully. He is achingly slow about it, savoring the hot, tight feel of him around him. Gradually, he lets the creation magic pulse inside him, until he crooks a finger to stimulate him, igniting nerves all through his belly, his cock, and down his thighs.

Amell cries out softly and it levels out as a whimper. He pulls his hair now, toes arched so severely that he threatens to pull the muscle in his calf.

"Maker, fuck. Anders... You're fucking gorgeous," he moans out, "Maker, you're so gorgeous."

 _“Maker’s fucking balls!”_ Ordrin calls from the bunk directly on the other side of the room, and then Everson is threatening to bathe the whole room in light if they do not keep their mouths closed. Amell is laughing again, and as the blanket has mostly fallen away, Anders can see his friend… _lover_ … has clamped his own hand over his mouth. Anders remains still for a moment, hoping Everson is not serious about the light, but when nothing happens, Amell nudges his shoulders gently with his toes.

Anders is encouraged by this, and begins to move the finger inside him to massage his prostate, shedding warm magic with every caress. His other hand takes Amell's shaft again, squeezing with just the right amount of pressure, lips sinking and rising along it, sucking hard at the tip as he tongues him.

It only takes another moment of this treatment before Amell’s stomach coils tightly. His knuckles are white, gripping onto the stained sheets as he gasps and bucks his hips against Anders' mouth, throwing his head back with clenched eyes.

"I-I'm going to come," he gasps out between heaving breaths.

Anders slows his motion, for a moment, letting his mouth leave his cock long enough to merely gaze up at him. He simply tongues the tip of him, swirling languidly, and stills the magic flooding from him. He has drawn Amell to his peak, and left him on its verge.

Amell stares at him with lidded eyes, mouth fully parted with an unhinged jaw. He snaps his hips upwards in a desperate motion, issuing a whimper as he does so.

"Please," he begs in a moan. "Fuck, Anders, please."

Keeping his eyes on him, Anders very slowly guides another finger inside. Even as Amell winces at the unfamiliar, mildly painful sensation, the discomfort is buried in a slow flood of creation magic. Anders merely allows it to pulse from his fingers for a moment, until he finally resumes the motion of his mouth, drawing him fully inside. Both fingers now find his weakness inside, and Amell can feel heat spreading all the way from his belly to his thighs to his toes. He is grasping his hair, almost roughly now, digging his heels into the mattress.

"I'm gonna... Oh Maker, Anders, I'm g-gonna -" though he pauses to gasp sharply, and his cock twitches inside Anders’ warm, slick mouth. His entire frame begs for release, each muscle tensing and locking until he seizes altogether at the pinnacle of his pleasure. Pent up and brought to the farthest edge, knuckles white and eyes clenched, a sharp gasp spills from his throat before his vision explodes with stars at the final snap of his hips. It is a loud cry, muffled by the hand that remains in place over his mouth, now scored by teeth. His toes arch as he begins uncoiling, spilling out every shred of himself amidst a flood of blinding carnal pleasure. A rasping mantra of Anders’ name tumbles from his lips in reverent, choking prayer, vacillating between whisper and whine as he fills his mouth with his seed.

Anders takes this offering gladly, welcomingly, bringing Amell to the back of his throat and holding him there as his release falls over his tongue. It is blessedly hot and salty, and delicious, he thinks. As Amell's thrusts diminish, he slowly slips his fingers out, instead wrapping them around Amell's lower back, pulsing still with magic, but gently, relaxing muscles tensed in the throes of release.

At last, he draws his mouth away, peppering kisses along his belly, crawling up his body to nestle into his shoulder. He kisses his cheek, his ear.

"Anders..." Amell mumbles past swollen lips and shudders severely in blissful detumescence. He wraps his arms around his waist and grips onto him tightly; so tightly that he fears he may bruise him.

 _“I win!”_ Mosley calls from across the room. He is ensconced on the top bunk farthest from the two flushed mages now huddling under Amell’s blanket once more.

“Nope.” Everson calls. “Just a blow job. Bets are on until the deal is officially sealed.”

Anders, snug in Amell’s arms, feels a different shade of flush spread across his cheeks. “Andraste’s tits,” he whispers in Amell’s ear. “They have bets going?”

Amell rumbles with laughter, tightening his grip around him.

“It would seem,” he murmurs, though suddenly wriggles his head out from beneath the blanket.

“Are you old hens done gossiping yet?” he hollers loudly across the quarters.

“Just get it done already so we can go to sleep!” Mosley replies, and then Everson grumbles something unintelligible and the mage-light finally goes out. Suddenly, he hangs over the top of the bunk and they can see his shadow.

“Don’t break the bed,” he snaps, and then he is gone, and they are plunged back into a semblance of privacy. Such trysts are not uncommon in the all male dormitory they share with several score mages, and both Amell and Anders had been privy to the sexual liaisons of their fellow man. Likewise, this is nothing new to their bunkmates.

Anders is thrumming with laughter, breath tickling Amell’s ear, and then he finally manages: “Mosley is a decent sort. He helps me with kitchen duties sometimes when I’m on the wrong side of DeChamps. Maybe we should, um… let him win?”

“Oh…” Amell breathes raggedly and kneads his scalp, “I quite agree.”

Although it is fully dark now, Amell senses Anders’ smile, as though they are somehow connected through the Fade, bound from within. The thin mage untangles himself from Amell’s arms long enough to shift out of his own trousers, and then greedily seeks his embrace again, needing to touch him. Anders’ erection had softened for a moment as they were the brunt of jokes from their fellow mages, reminded that they will forever be without true solitude together, but it is now anxiously stiff against his hips again, catcalls forgotten.

Amell, while expended, collects Anders back into his arms and imprints a warm kiss upon the sensitive skin stretched taut across his collarbone. His hand slips between them to grasp his throbbing cock, pumping softly before a thumb teases the leaking head. With bare flesh pressed up against the other, Amell indulges in this moment, as it is an intimacy rarely shared by two mages. Furthermore, it is the physical manifestation of an enduring fantasy; one that has carried through the years as he touched himself with whispers of a forbidden name caressing the impenetrable darkness of nighttime. Yet he holds Anders now, stroking his twitching cock beneath the heat of his palm, and licks along the ridge of a freckled shoulder.

Anders moans softly, burying the sound against the flesh of Amell's neck. His body has become a thing unto itself, unmastered by his mind, for conscious thought seems to have receded on a tide of physical rapture. His hips move of their own accord, in rhythm to the cadence set by Amell's hand as it strokes him. He pushes a hand back through Amell's hair, seeking his lips, kissing him in a broken way for he must continuously make an effort to breathe as he feels blinding heat, almost painful, permeate his belly, spreading, saturating. Dimly, he wonders at his unraveling, for he is no stranger to physical pleasure, whether with other partners in the Circle, or lying alone in his own bunk, but now, at this moment, he feels he could lose himself at only Amell's touch. And he wants to.

"Rylan..." he groans now, the name only he is permitted to call him. "I… unn..." He cannot make the words form, to tell him he cannot last much longer.

“Yes?” Amell purrs against his lips and, without warning, a rudimentary creation spell taught to all mages of the Circle leaks from his fingertips.

The fingers in Amell's hair seize, following the rigidity that claims Anders' body as the flood of creation magic courses through him. His arms twitch, Amell's head shoved back, and Anders catches his throat with his lips, his teeth, whimpering with a muffled cry of release as his seed cascades over Amell's fingers, pulsing out with the pounding of his heart. He had been upon this threshold simply from the novelty, the satisfaction, of bringing Amell to his peak, and it had taken next to nothing to push him over the edge.

Amell moans triumphantly and brings the hand looped around his back to cup his jaw. He catches his bottom lip between teeth, tugging with gentle insistence as his palm coaxes out his hot, sticky seed, finally slowing with languid strokes and a concluding sigh. Anders shudders inside his hold, shaking apart with the last of his release, and Amell’s fingers brush through the damp clinging to their stomachs. Spreading, smearing, relishing in his heat as victory, he swipes with two fingers before pulling his hand away. Their lips move against the other in a deep kiss and Amell suddenly presses a coated fingertip against his entrance, teasing him with slow, aching circles.

“I want you,” he breathes.

Anders' breath hitches at the unexpected, but wanted, touch, and then he expels a lungful of air in a sigh of desire. His heart, which had only just begun to slow as Amell kissed him, begins to thump again against his chest, and his stomach flutters.

“I want you too,” Anders sighs against his lips. “I think I’ve always wanted you.”

Amell shivers at his admission and responds to it by carefully inserting a finger inside him, his other hand still cupped around his jaw.

“And I you,” he issues with a soft kiss.

Anders inhales deeply as Amell slides his finger into him, slick with his own seed. He shifts his body, turning into the mage at his side, pressing his face into the pillow. His smooth, freckled shoulders are once again exposed to the night air, and he lifts his hips into Amell's touch, his belly now flush against the bed.

A primal need to see Anders this way - arched and spread and aching for him - prompts Amell to groan loudly. He nearly casts his own orb of light so that he may voraciously indulge in this image, yet his last shred of willpower halts his brewing mana. Instead, he pulls the thick blanket from Anders’ shoulders, dragging it over his frame and he thrusts his wrist forward. The slick finger glides in and out of him easily, working him open and stealing a moan from his throat. He suddenly sits up on his knees and places his hand at the small of his back, pressing down such that Anders dutifully arches himself higher.

 _Oh_ , what he would give to see this delightful vision, but a muffled cry at another thrust of his finger immediately prompts him to extract it. He is achingly stiff again, for what he lacks in sight is replaced by touch and sound. The sounds, oh Maker, the _sounds_ , and his hands latch onto Anders’ hips. A knee impatiently spreads his thighs apart and he positions himself desperately behind his fellow mage, allowing another groan to slip from his own throat at the raw, carnal, throbbing want that sears his veins.

Amell is between his thighs now, hands grasping his hips and pulling him back, toward him. Anders is almost on his knees now, arched to receive him, and he turns his head on the pillow, lips wet with saliva, hair stringy across his face, and he strains to see Amell in the darkness, but he can only perceive his outline.

His body jerks as Amell slides a fingers inside him once more, and he bites his lip as it is joined by another seconds later. Desperately, he pushes back into him, wanting more, but Amell only thrusts into him once, twice, and then he pulls out. He bites his lip, growling softly in frustration, his own erection straining against the bed, tingling with electric nerves. He stretches a hand blindly into the darkness to find Amell, to encourage him, but then his lover's hands are on him again, parting the cheeks of his ass, and he feels the head of his cock pressed against his entrance, stretched and slick with his own come. Numbly, Anders’ hand drops to the bed again, fingers coiling in the sheet.

Amell breathes raggedly, chest heaving in and out, and he pushes the head of his cock inside him. His eyes slip shut as hot air expels from between teeth, feeling Anders stretch slowly around his girth. He inches himself deeper, pulling at his hips to tug slickly along his length, until with a small gasp, he is fully sheathed inside him.

Anders abruptly turns his face back into the pillow so that it swallows the deep moan that shudders through him, dragged all the way from his belly to his throat. The fingers of both hands now curl into the sheets, knuckles white, and he gyrates his hips, ever so slowly, adjusting to the feel of Amell inside him. His breath comes rapidly from the open mouth against the pillow, raising steam against his cheeks.

Amell is still for a moment, heart thundering between his ears, and he slowly glides his hands up and down Anders’ back. Fingertips smooth over the ridges of ribs, the bumps of his spine, each plane of taut muscle, exploring him unapologetically, before they return to his hips. With a firm grip, he gradually rolls his own outward and then back in with an audible slap. He gasps softly, relishing in Anders’ tight fit around his thumping cock, and his eyes flutter shut. His mouth is partially slack, fingers tightening their grip, as he falls into a careful, unhurried rhythm of thrusting.

Air escapes Anders' lungs along with small gasps of pleasure at each thrust, mingling in his own ears with the wet sound of skin slapping against skin, of Amell's sliding fully in. He is wound too tensely for a moment to do little more than cling to the sheets and feel, but he slowly begins to relax, to once again lose the ability to think beyond pure, animal instinct. His hips begin to move in rhythm with Amell's, shifting forward as he moves back, then meeting him, riding a constant wave of increasingly intense, heated gratification.

A hand slips from anchoring onto Anders and his fingers grasp at the thick blanket rumpled beside them. Amell stuffs it into his own mouth, clamping down on the fabric as it muffles his ragged moans. Yet the carnal sound of their joining, of each wet smack falling into cadence, vibrates loudly inside his skull. Heat pools between his loins and spreads to curling toes, though both hands return to clutching the unraveling creature before him. He is fucking him harder now, slamming into him with force and choking down each grunt.

The sound of rushing blood fills Anders' ears, and his cock throbs with it every time Amell pounds into him. With a concerted effort, he unclenches the fingers of one hand from the sheet, which by now has come loose from the mattress, and flings it back ungracefully to find some part of Amell to touch. Groping, he finally grasps his thigh, which is now slicked with sweat from his exertion, and he grips it forcefully. He is shoving his ass against him harder with each passing second, the friction of their fucking stroking his cock against the fabric beneath him.

 _“You owe me the notes for that glyph,_ ” Mosley’s voice suddenly shocks Amell back into reality.

 _“If I don’t end up cracking my skull open on the floor when this damned bed collapses…_ ” Everson calls back from above them.

Amell allows the blanket to fall from his mouth with a rumbling laugh that Anders responds to by groaning into the pillow.

“Enjoying yourself up there?” he calls out to his bunkmate with a grin.

Anders removes his hand from Amell’s thigh and then brings it back with a resounding slap. The sound brings a burst of laughter from several points in the dark room.

“I _will_ illuminate this room, fool lad,” Everson threatens as his palms grip onto the paneling of the upper bunk, laying with gritted teeth as he endures the rocking cadence of Amell’s thrusts that vibrate throughout the entire structure’s frame.

Anders cannot help himself, and begins to laugh into the pillow, feeling his face burning. He should be used to having nothing to himself in the Circle, but he suddenly feels as though they are performing for the entire room. Amell, however, seems to be enjoying it. So much so that he slams into Anders with the snap of his hips, fingers now snaking into his tresses to grip onto tightly.

Anders grunts as Amell tugs his head back, opening his throat, the pillow now no longer covering the rasping of his breath, or the tiny groans that escape his lips every time Amell thrusts deeply into him, leaning forward over his body. Anders rakes his hand up Amell's thigh, over his hip, and traces the shifting body and the trail of downy hair to the base of his cock. He means only to cast a hint of a creation spell, just a suggestive stimulus, but he is a spirit healer, and he is akin at this moment to a raw element, and the magic that surges into his lover is volcanic.

Amell had intended to quip back at Everson, for he bears a tongue sharpened out of ennui, but Anders’ spell ignites his blood with flammable shock. Instead of a well-crafted retort, a raw groan rips out of his throat as magic surges through him and pools in his belly. He is suddenly thrust to the edge of endurance, and his thighs begin to tremble slightly.

Anders attempts to reign in his spell, but he merely manages to create a stuttering pulse that surges every time Amell thrusts into him, and he is biting his lip, moisture leaking from the corners of his eyes as he squeezes them shut. He is close, so close, and he snakes a hand beneath his rocking hips, grasping himself, now balanced only on the plane of his upper body.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Amell hisses, “fuck, Anders, I’m – I’m –“ yet his jaw falls slack, hanging open as his entire frame vibrates.

He is fucking him deeply, quickly, filling and spreading him raw when a final thrust prompts his blackened vision to explode with stars. A dribble of spit leaks from the corner of his mouth to the tune of a loud cry as he starts to come. It is almost violent, no doubt the result of Anders’ potent spell, the way in which he shudders and fills him with ropes of his hot seed.

“Maker, Maker, oh my fuck, _Maker_ ,” he rasps out.

Amell's broken words, the forbidden sound of his pleasure and the burgeoning slickness of his final strokes as he spills inside him, are too much for Anders, shoving him completely over the edge. The hand grasping Amell drops limply to the bed, and he does not even need to call magic to his own hand, and with one, two strokes, he too is spiraling into blinding white release. His hips jerk as he comes, Amell's cock still stiff and buried deep within him, and every shudder stimulates nerves deep in his body, sending the jolt of the orgasm through every limb, dimming his vision, racing along his spine and down his thighs like molten fire.

It is not the Maker's name on his lips, but Amell's, seeming to echo endlessly in his skull to the pounding cadence of his pulse.

Gradually, however, this cadence fades into another sound, rioting around the room in discord: _clapping hands._ Anders buries his burning face in the pillow again, though it is more a flush of exertion now than embarrassment. In fact, he is vibrating with laughter as Amell slowly slips out of him, falling to the bed beside him and panting beneath his own laughter. They are both exposed when suddenly, a small globe of illumination reappears along with Everson’s head over the edge of the bunk.

“Was it as good for you as it was for me?” he snarks.

“Brilliant,” Amell chuckles past a pant and nuzzles his nose into Anders’ neck. “You come too, Ev?” he pitches a glance at his bunkmate, seeming unfazed by the fact that he is lying there as naked as the day he was born.

Everson snorts. “Can we all go to sleep now?”

“Sorry Everson,” Anders murmurs into the pillow, his sated, lazy smile indicating that he is, in fact, not sorry.

The magelight snaps out as Everson disappears again, grumbling about having to wake up in a few hours. Anders is still laughing softly as he reaches out and wraps his arm around Amell’s chest.

Amell immediately responds to his touch by burrowing his face into his shoulder and wrapping arms around his waist. He kisses his collarbone softly, peppering along its jutting length before playfully nipping his jawline.

“I could get used to this,” Anders whispers, smiling still, kissing Amell’s forehead, nose, cheek.

“So could I,” he murmurs with a sigh and rests his cheek upon his chest.

It is a truthful, plain admission. One that bears no edge of duplicity. He kisses his bared throat softly and inhales, tightening the grip. Indeed, while he cannot see him amidst the bleak of night now punctuated by shallow snores, he simply listens. First to his ragged breathing, slowing with every passing second, and then to his heart that thuds dully against his skull. They are damp with mingled sweat and seed, bodies now cooling down from flushed, throbbing need to enter a state of detumescence. Amell blinks languidly, his lashes now brushing against Anders’ skin in a ticklish manner, and his beloved friend chuckles quietly inside his hold.

Though he supposes now that this is his lover.

His  _lover._

Graduated from the shores of platonic conduct, it would seem, as Anders responds to him with a warm kiss to the crown of his head.

Amell sighs deeply, for while his burning core quells into a state of blissful calm, his chest remains swollen. Threatening to burst with each breath, he merely holds onto Anders, shutting his eyes to slip into yet another illusory thought. It is a despondent wish, one that could never root itself in reality as the snores of their sleeping quarters fill their ears. Yet he wishes for it anyhow, fantasizing with shut eyes, if only for this one night, that they could remain this way for all eternity.

His desire is not entirely baseless, for a bond of steel, one that arguably extends past this realm, indeed connects them.  

-ooo-

Yet it is not to be, for time and confinement irrevocably change the friend he cherished as a boy, the man he loves, who longs more for freedom than their companionship, for change, while Amell longs only for stasis, constancy. And then one day, years later, the Templars take him away, locking him in a tower for his rebellious ways, and the man that returns to him on the eve of the Fifth Blight is not the same.

There are six instances in which Anders asks Amell to run away from the Circle with him; and six times he has been met with complacent hesitance. Thus on the seventh, there is no question, but merely a goodbye, perhaps permanent, as it is this same degree of complacency that keeps Rylan Amell at Kinloch Hold even after a Grey Warden-Commander seeks his aid.

Where he finds himself amidst the chaos of a broken Circle, peering into the maw of darkness, dreaming, if only for a moment as he lays upon icy stone inches from death, of once tasting the sun upon a constellation of freckles.  

 

**Author's Note:**

> These characters fall within the canon of our series The World (XXI), which may be reached by clicking on either of our author links.


End file.
